If it's World Book Week, or more accurately World Book Day plus overspill, then I must have have a packed calendar of Comic Art Masterclasses in schools. Paradoxically this week was slightly less full than the previous week, or World Book Day Overspill Car Park Number Two as we know it.
Staines Library was a one off afternoon class with half a dozen pupils in. Which is really all I can find to say. They were great. I've cheated that flipchart on the back, haven't I? They didn't get a special drawing of their own (a victim of Uncle Kev's mean-spirited "if I have to supply my own flipchart and pad, they're getting a drawing-I-prepared-earlier to open the class with" rule.)
Oak Bank School in Leighton Buzzard, who got me for World Book Day itself by dint of having booked me for a return visit a whole year ago (schools thinking of doing this for 2027, I can confirm WBD and the day before are already taken) included some slightly older pupils, from years 9, 10 and 11. Can you guess which title they came up with? Believe me I had to eliminate a lot of Epstein Island and Diddy suggestions from the pile before we boiled it down to their vaguely acceptable choice.
Millfield Prep was, as you'd imagine, the poshest school of the week. If you've not heard of it, google its alumni. There you go. They had magnanimously accepted being bumped from World Book Day itself to the day after (when I discovered Oak Bank's booking from twelve months ago hadn't quite made it into the right place in my diary), and were rewarded with a couple of my favourite comic covers from a couple of splendid titles. Yes, you know a school's quite posh when their title mentions drop-kicking someone through a conversion post.
The celebrities these seven groups chose to appear in my demonstration strip were: Stephen Hawking (twice - I subsequently discovered this was because he'd been mentioned in Epstein Files news that I'd managed to miss), Kim Jong Un, KSI (a Youtuber, I'm told), Michael Jackson, Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift.
 |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |
